Otter's Rock

sedoretuex has revealed, and I can now reveal that I wrote TWO stories! (I have not yet had time to read any stories but my own--I have been really busy this January--but I am planning on making my way through the collection soon.)

A sedoretu is a specific organization of a poly marriage created by Ursula K. Le Guin in her short story "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" aka "Another Story" available in a 1994 short story collection of the same name. It includes four people and specific arrangements of the relationships inside it. All people have a "moiety" that is considered as inherent as gender; the two moieties are Morning and Evening. Sex with someone of the same moiety is considered incest. The expected relationships within each sedoretu are:
The Morning woman and the Evening man (the “Morning marriage”)
The Evening woman and the Morning man (the “Evening marriage”)
The Morning woman and the Evening woman (the “Day marriage”)
The Morning man and the Evening man (the “Night marriage”)
(i.e. two homosexual and two heterosexual pairings) Here is the Fanlore explanation of it and the E2 explanation.

I like sedoretus because they create such interesting dynamics, one doesn't often see poly arrangements with the more rigid structures and cultural weight that one tends to find in a marriage. And fitting them into the worldbuilding of whatever fandom is always an interesting challenge.

My assignment was a Star Wars Legends Luke/Mara/Han/Leia foursome. I wrote a getting-together story, because that was most obvious; problem is, I've already done a Mara poly getting-together story (though that one was Luke/Mara/Lando), and Mara's character arc was roughly the same in both, and although I like the fic in general I was not thrilled that I couldn't find some other driving force for her. I include a diagram at the end if you have trouble visualizing the structure of the relationship.

Title: Dawning Understanding
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Written For: SassySnowperson in Sedoretu Exchange 2023
Fandom: Star Wars Legends
Betaed by: Shadaras

On Squidgeworld. On AO3. Rebloggable on tumblr and pillowfort.

On Dreamwidth. On AO3. Rebloggable on tumblr and pillowfort.

Mara slogged out of the cave, every step squelching in the mud and sending up noxious gasses. None of it toxic, or they would have been dead long since. Just unpleasant. And the mud. Was. Everywhere.

( Read more... )

Title: Currency
Fandom: Babylon 5/Star Wars Original Trilogy
Characters: Han Solo, Chewbacca, Londo Mollari, Commander Sinclair,
Betaed by: Morbane
Length: 4265 words
Rating: Gen
Written for: Brachylagus_fandom in Crossworks 2022

Summary: Han and Chewie take a job carrying cargo to a place so far out in Wild Space they've never even heard of the Empire. Or the Jedi.

On tumblr. On Pillowfort. At AO3. At Squidgeworld.


Han drank his ale, and looked around the bar as casually as he could manage. He didn't like the place. It was too bright, too open, and had a weird vibe. The clientele was pretty upscale, from what he could tell, but it was just a bar and a small group of tables on the edge of a common corridor, and the corridor itself was pretty plain. Clean, but not nearly nice enough for the clientele.

And the deck wasn't flat, because this place was too primitive to have artificial gravity. Han had never seen a station low-tech enough to get gravity by rotating.

( Anyway, it was not the sort of place Han would have chosen, but it was where his client had said, so here he was.  )